“Every faction conditions its members to think and act a certain way. And most people do it. For most people, it’s not hard to learn, to find a pattern of thought that works and stay that way. . . . But our minds move in a dozen different directions. We can’t be contained to one way of thinking. And that terrifies our leaders. It means we can’t be controlled.”

Beatrice Prior is a Divergent. And she’d better keep that a secret. Because in the future, specifically in the future Chicago of the novel, society is broken down into five factions based on the qualities of character that individuals demonstrate. The motto “Faction before blood” means that families are less important than factions. At sixteen, children attend a ceremony in which they choose the faction they will live with from then on. To choose a faction different from that of his parents means that the teen will be separated from his family for life.

Beatrice is from the Abnegation faction, the group of people who are self-sacrificing. They run the government since it is unlikely that they will make selfish grabs for power. The four other factors are: Candor (always tells the truth, no matter how rude or mean); Amity (friendship); Erudite (intelligent and bookish—love learning); and Dauntless (brave, fierce).

Living in the Abnegation faction is hard. Everyone is expected to always give up comforts for others. They are nice, they take turns, they listen to others, they don’t worry about fashion (all clothes are gray), and they don’t speak up before hearing someone else’s issues. Still, despite the lack of individualism in this, as a group, Abnegation plays nice. Not all groups do.

Like all sixteen year olds, Beatrice goes through a simulation that, based on her reaction to various situations, will indicate to which of the five factions she belongs. But her simulation results are inconclusive. She reacts to the virtual dangers as an Abnegation, a Dauntless, and an Erudite. The woman monitoring the simulation whispers that she is a Divergent. This is dangerous. She is not to tell anyone, but she should choose a faction. Unsure of what she should do, Beatrice (hence forward Tris) chooses Dauntless.

The Dauntless, traditionally brave, have the job of protecting the city. But in recent times, the leaders are more sadistic than courageous and the initiates are treated cruelly and encouraged to be brutal to one another. Only ten initiates will be accepted into the faction. Those who are cut will be factionless for the rest of their lives, impoverished nobodies, living on the street. The vicious, even gruesome, initiation process is heart-stopping. You won’t be able to stop reading through it—and it covers most of the book.

At the same time the initiates are vying for a spot in Dauntless, there is a rumor that Abnegation is misusing its power and that the Erudite want war and hope the Dauntless will cooperate. One of the young trainers of the initiates is Four, who tells Tris, “They don’t want you to act a certain way. They want you to think a certain way.” As a Divergent, her mind isn’t easy for others to control, so she’s a primary target, a girl who may be able to help Abnegation because of her many qualities.

If you’re looking for a good read after finishing The Hunger Games trilogy, this is a great choice. (I think the cover even tries for a subconscious Hunger Games feeling.) Be mindful that it’s for mature readers who aren’t sickened by the violence, which is excessive and somewhat repetitive. And, yes, the romance is there, too, a very sweet one that will have you rooting for Tris and Four. This is obviously the beginning of a trilogy. We don’t even know how the world outside of Chicago functions—whether this is something neglected by the writer as she was swept away with her descriptions of Dauntless sadism or purposeful, something we will learn as society breaks apart and moves outward. But we will certainly check out ‘book two’ because we want to find out.

When Christopher Creed disappears from Steepleton, the rumors fly. He spent his life being bullied, and his disappearance seems the obvious outcome for a high-school misfit. With only a cryptic email to the school principal to provide clues, the town is awash in rumors. Did Chris run away? Did he commit suicide? Was he murdered?

Torey Adams is a super popular guy. He has an A-list girlfriend, he’s a football player. He’s also mentioned in Christopher’s goodbye email. And thereby becomes a suspect in Christopher’s disappearance. Wishing to set the record straight, Torey becomes involved in his own investigation of Chris’s disappearance. He finds out that some of the best people to depend on in Steepleton are others who are also misfits—Christopher’s neighbor, Ali, who has an (undeserved) reputation as the school slut and her boyfriend, Bo, who is a ‘boon,’ a guy from the boondocks, considered angry white trash.

To help in his search, Torey sets up a website about Christopher’s story. He, Ali, and Bo begin to suspect foul play by Christopher’s own mother, who seems to be mentally unstable. They get involved in breaking and entering Chris’s home in hopes of finding a diary. Torey has a frightening session with a psychic, and he feels that Chris’s body is in the old Indian graveyard behind his house.

I read this novel when it came out about 10 years ago and loved it. It was the first book about bullying that I’d read with a realistic characterization of the bullied boy. Christopher is weird. He is irritating. He says and does entirely inappropriate things.  But does that mean it’s OK to berate him, use him as a punching bag? Of course not, but the kids in Steepleton do, and then when he goes missing, they all point the finger at someone else. They are mean, mean, mean—and unwilling to take responsibility for their behavior. Having a few of them learn to do so makes the book a great read. Add to that the suspense with entering the Creed home, the psychic, the graveyard in storming weather. Totally compelling.

What reminded me of this book after more than a decade (read in those pre-blogging days) is that a sequel came out recently, Following Christopher Creed. I had to read it to find out what happened to all the characters, especially Ali, Bo, and Torey.

Well, you know I’m afraid that if I say something is wonderful just to get you to read it, you won’t trust me again if I’m overstating the case. So, the truth: I was disappointed in the sequel, mostly because the pace of the book is really off. It drags quite a bit because it’s repetitive. I think the repetition is the author’s effort to have everything make sense for the reader who never read The Body of Christopher Creed. But it doesn’t work. If you don’t read the first book, you won’t get a good sense of the three characters I mentioned—Ali, Bo, and Torey.

In Following Christopher Creed, a college newspaper reporter, Mike Mavic, comes to Steepleton to write a story about the whole Christopher Creed disappearance. He was bullied himself—in fact, he is almost blinded in a bullying incident and has a service dog to guide him.  He’s always been interested in Torey Adams’s website about Creed and follows it for the five years since Creed disappeared.

Mike arrives in town just after reading about the discovery of a body, a possible murder victim, that he read about on the Creed website. He interviews locals and finds the town still much affected by the Creed disappearance, but no one has gotten any nicer. If anything, the teens are the same bullying crowd, seeking weakness in others, with the hope of hurting them.

Mike connects with Christopher’s younger brother, Justin, who has big problems of his own. He’s bipolar and has recently become an addict as he tries to self medicate. In his manic states, he believes that he can use the power of ‘quantum thought’ to draw Christopher back to him. With his wild unpredictability, the vicious town teens, the strange occurrences in the lightning field (where lightning seems to come up out of the ground instead of from the sky), the decomposing body in that field—well, there is a lot to pull the reader through the story.

If you’re like me and want to find out about all those favorites characters from the first book, I do recommend that you read Following Christopher Creed—just speed-read and skip through the repetition. The end is quite a shocker.

Horror: The Top Ten for Teens

With teachers bringing classes in for horror and mystery book talks near Halloween, I thought it was a good time to look at our collection of teen horror and update it. One of the problems I have anymore is in defining horror. So many books with vampires, werewolves and zombies are just romances with differently-abled characters. One of the book review magazines I read –Booklist—decided to rescue librarians by picking their favorite ten teen horror novels. None of the novels are heartwarming nor are they romances.

They’re horror.

I had most of the titles at Colony, but none at Chaffey, so I went shopping. (So Tigers, check before Halloween. I think they’ll be here.) I read my first on the list. And, yes, I thought it had the creepy factor. It’s also by the author whose books are most often challenged right now—and since it’s Banned Books Week and since our frosh classes are having a look at this author—I decided to start with Lauren Myracle.

Bliss by Lauren Myracle

Publisher’s blurb on the novel: Having grown up in a California commune, Bliss sees her aloof grandmother’s Atlanta world as a foreign country, but she is determined to be nice as a freshman at an elite high school, which makes her the perfect target for . . . a girl obsessed with the occult.

Reason Booklist picked it: Creepiest sleepover scene of all time.

What other pros say: Publishers’ Weekly “Charles Manson Family murders, racism, ghosts, blood sacrifices and prom queens–and, remarkably, supports this outré mix with clever timing and well-placed red herrings.”

VOYA: “kept me reading all through the night. It’s geared toward a mature audience of readers who are strong in what they believe.”

What I have to say: hippie-dippy craziness of the Summer of Love (1969) turns sinister, plus the main character has an ESP connection with spirits, so what’s better than that? Myracle does make it better with deeper probing of the period—the KKK; interracial dating; the Charles Mansion Family murders (The Tate-LaBianca murders) set against the ultra-sweet popular TV show of that time, The Andy Griffith Show, and the wonderful town of Mayberry.

No silly, make-believe endings here. This one’s serious enough for your teachers to love—a good choice for outside reading. In general, it’s not blood and guts violence, but it is for mature readers because it is creepy, creepy, creepy.

Uglies by Scott Westerfield

I was looking for a love story with some reality to it. I wanted to read a YA love story that didn’t end with the perfect couple, after a few fights, lasting forever in their fairy tale. So I checked some reviews and settled on After the Moment. Here are some of the reasons why:

“expertly-crafted story”

“The author’s feel for character and voice has never been better.”

“Leigh narrates with deep intelligence and heightened feeling.”

“The story focuses on the teens’ emotionally wrenching senior year, which begins in love before a possible date rape sets off escalating tragedy.”

Now I’ve been reading. And this got me to thinking. Because:

100 pages into the book, as the reader, I’ve met Maia, the girl half of this couple in love, long enough to see her eat a piece of cake and bring a suitcase full of sheets and books to a grieving girl. And here’s what I know:

It doesn’t matter that every professional reviewer raved about this book or that the first two pages of prologue are a real hook and that eventually I will get to the heart of the story (but God only knows when). I am never going to get a non-reader hooked on this book. The pace is way off. It has gone on so long about neighbors and their brothers, about what color the protagonist will paint his second bedroom and . . . If I recommend this book to any student who isn’t already a constant reader, I’m doomed. S/he won’t read the book past the first ten pages. And worse, that student will never trust my recommendation again.

That’s why I need to read all these books before I chat them up in the library.

Which got me to thinking some more.

What is one of the best books out there can make a non-reader read? One that has good writing, a great (even important) idea behind the story, but also has a rapid-fire plot line and lots of adventure? Yes, of course, The Hunger Games. But that trilogy is still wildly popular right now, so I don’t need to convince you to read it. Instead, let me move backward a few years because you might have been too young to read this trilogy when it came out: Uglies by Scott Westerfield.

Uglies is one of the best, fastest moving, constant action, suspense-filled YA books I’ve ever read. In the future world of Uglies, all people have an operation at age sixteen to make them ‘pretty’—that is, they all are changed to be perfect, or what is deemed perfect by society. Big-eyed and full-lipped, they appear childlike for the rest of their lives. And for some reason, their intellect remains rather childish, too. (Sinister plot elements ahead!)

While Tally is awaiting her operation so that she can leave Uglyville and join her best guy friend, Paris, over in Pretty Town, she meets a girl, Shay, who has the same birthday as Tally and therefore, should be made pretty on the same day. But Shay doesn’t want to be like everyone else, and her escape propels Tally in a direction she never would have thought possible. Tally has some exciting escapes even before she decides to fight the system, but once she does, danger is around every corner.

A bonus in this novel is that Tally’s method of transportation and escape is often bungee jumping—or even more often, hover boarding. Hover boarding is like skating, surfing or snowboarding. Tally has to be balanced as she quickly evades her pursuers. But she’s not on the water or the snow. She’s flying through the air, and a wrong move can mean death. If you skate, surf or snowboard, you’re going to be able to relate to Tally and Shay immediately.

So, I can recommend books like After the Moment to students I know well enough. We can talk about Leigh’s feeling about the Iraq War and how they relate to the more personal violence that becomes a part of his life; about how he is trying so hard to be a good guy, and how that doesn’t always work. But if you’re just trying to find that first book that will hook you into reading, I’m going for Uglies. And when you finish it, you can go on with Pretties, Specials, and Extras. And then you can move onto other series by the same author. And then books by other authors with similar themes. And then books about other things.

Get hooked.

This one isn’t on my summer reading list, but I want to make a quick note of it because I have a couple of students each year who want to read something with vampires that doesn’t fit the teen ‘Twilight’ mold. These students are happy to read a longer book and are looking for some serious vampire lore. Well, it’s been a few years since I read The Historian, and while I don’t remember many of the details (ah, aging!), I can tell you that it’s the perfect book for those students who want to read something that encompasses the vast store of vampire mythology.

The Historian centers around a sixteen-year-old American girl in the 1970s whose father is a diplomat and travels a lot, leaving her with a caretaker in Amsterdam. (Her mother is dead. And although I’m calling her ‘the girl,’ that isn’t just because my memory is bad. She remains unnamed.) One day she discovers a weird journal in her father’s paper. It has nothing written in its pages, but it does have a strange dragon image on the first page with the word “Drakulya” imprinted there. With it is a packet of letters. She begins to read, “My dear and unfortunate successor…” Right then, she knows that her dad has a second, secret life, that he is in constant danger and that he has been protecting her from the truth.

Basically, when her father tells her how he got the journal and how it has affected his life—it appears that his own mentor, history professor Bartholomew Rossi, was killed over it—she starts a trip across Europe seeking out the historical and cruel Vlad the Impaler. And she has to go it without dad because he mysteriously disappears (as did Rossi years before). However, she isn’t entirely alone; she has a companion (and romantic interest) to help her.

The novel will take you through all the folklore that causes people to associate the real Vlad with the preeminent vampire Dracula (and tell you all the horrific stuff the historical Vlad actually did to people—they didn’t call him the Impaler for nothing). One of the most important things that she has to do is figure out whether Dracula is still alive, not an easy task. If he is dead, where was he really buried? She tracks down all the places that legend says he has been interred. Did someone really cut off his head? This novel is as much a mystery as it is a book of the supernatural. Reading it, you’ll become engrossed in the heroine’s search as she uses research, maps, old manuscripts—anything she can find—to go from city to city throughout Europe in her quest for Dracula and to find out what happened to her father.

Generally, I review books that have wide appeal, but I needed to add this because it is such a ‘big’ story—large scale, romance, gothic/horror, intense vampire lore—that it’s perfect for the two or three of you each year who seek just such a novel. And, hey—one of the details that I do remember is that it has a truly evil, living-dead librarian. Enjoy.

     Fire

For the second time in a week, I’m in the weird position of recommending to you a book that I really didn’t like all that much. I hope that this doesn’t appear hypocritical. Let me just say that I didn’t like Fire (or Graceling, its partner book) because over several years of study as an English major, I learned to loathe this sort of thing. And the reason I’m recommending it to you is that I honestly think you’re going to like it. (You’re young and not so jaded!) I’ve tried it out on two students. One is finished with the book and really enjoyed it; the other is still reading (and that’s a good sign). All the professional reviews were glowing.

Fire, who lives in the Dells, is the last human ‘monster’ in the kingdom. Monsters are not as we think of them; they are like typical creatures, but have extraordinary coloring and the ability not only to read minds, but to influence others’ thoughts, to control them if they aren’t strong enough to resist. Fire’s fabulous coloring includes hair that is a true red, orange and yellow. She’s is so unearthly beautiful that some people can’t resist touching her, running their hands through her hair. (Yes, if you know me, you know the author was already losing me with this.) Fire must cover herself in public to be able to travel unmolested. Her major concern with being a monster is that she not behave like her father (Cansrel), who used his powers to ruin lives and nearly destroy the kingdom.

Fire lands inKing City, where all the important men lust after her. However, she’s already engaged in a casual sexual relationship with a childhood friend, Archer. King Nash and his brother Brigan—the commander of troops—are engaged in saving the kingdom from evildoers. They could use Fire’s help in interrogating spy prisoners. Fire’s not sure whether using her powers to control others’ minds, even for the benefit of the kingdom, is right or just. So she has some important decisions to make. And, since both brothers are gaga over her, she has to sort that out, too, as well as her feelings for Archer, who is having multiple relationships with women in his frustration over the fact that Fire won’t marry him. (A Ms. Waddle side note: Girls, don’t fall for that nonsense when a guy tells you he’s playing the field because you’re not giving him everything he wants. It’s the oldest trick in the book.)

Some of the reasons I had a hard time getting through Fire were the same reasons it took me awhile read Graceling, the primary problem being that it was too repetitive. (Fire was tired of being attacked? Yeah, well, I got sick of hearing about her musings on the subject.) Other things just seems silly to me—that her presence provoked monster attacks—the monster form of raptors especially go after her. Or the constant references to her ‘monthly bleedings,’ how she had to lock herself indoors during that time or risk being shredded by monster creatures, who were especially sensitive to her at that time. I guess Cashore was trying to elevate this woman’s issue to a philosophical discussion (what should she tell Brigan’s little daughter about it? Would it hurt her psyche?) I believe this sort of thing will drive male readers away. And the inclusion of a single character from Graceling seemed artificial.

Nevertheless.

When all is said and done, you’re going to like this book because Fire is the same kind of kick-butt, never-back-down, take-no-prisoners heroine that Graceling’s Katsa was. She, too, is unconventional, refuses to get married, and carefully guards her mind and her independence. You’ll like the romance. In addition, Fire makes some important points about the relationship between parents and children. Fire has to understand that she is not responsible for her father’s evil and that she is not destined to repeat it. And there are some great quotable lines. I liked this from the end:

“Some people had too much power and too much cruelty to live. Some people were too terrible, no matter if you loved them; no matter that you had to make yourself terrible too, in order to stop them. Some things just had to be done.”

Note: I tagged this as ‘mature’ because of the casual sexual relationships that many of the characters have. There aren’t any explicit sexual descriptions, but I think some parents would have an issue with the book. A war is going on, so there’s violence, too, but it’s not graphic.

I’m thinking this may be my ‘best YA read’ of 2011 although I know it’s still early in the year.

But wow.

Cameron, sixteen, lazy, and a not-so-great student is the loser brother of a popular girl, Jenna. He hates school, hangs around with a couple of stoners, periodically indulges with them, and seems to live to irritate his parents—a father who is an university professor and seems to be having an affair with one of his grad students and a mother who is an English prof, unable to make the slightest decision—even what to order in a restaurant.

The family members avoid one another except when Cameron tries to humiliate Jenna in front of her popular friends at school. (“Hey, Jenna. Were those your birth control pills I found in the bathroom this morning?”) That is, until Cameron starts to lose control of his muscles and acts out in class, including punching Jenna’s self-righteous and hypocritically religious boyfriend. Everyone assumes this is the result of a drug problem (even though Cameron swears it’s not) and Cam is expelled and has all privileges taken away at home. But when he goes for treatment, the doctors find that he has Creutzfeldt-Jacob, that is, he has the human version of “mad cow” disease. His brain is deteriorating, and he can’t control his muscles or movements; CJ causes hallucinations. There is no cure.

This hilarious book has been poking fun at societal norms and values. (‘Buddha Burger’ where Cam works makes customer feel like they’re doing something good, being ‘Zen’ by eating there. Nerds reciting lines from Star Fighter—aka Star Wars, everyone wanting to be on a reality show—I don’t know. There’s just too much dark humor in this book! The happiness cult alone makes this worth the read.) Now the  narrator is certainly going to die.

Who should appear to save the day but Dulcie—a pink-haired punk angel. She tells Cam he can not only survive, but also save the world from a tear in the fabric of time, made by Dr. X when he was seeking the cure for death. All Cam has to do is go on a quest with his friend Gonzo (the dwarf). After the two ditch the hospital and hit the road, they pick up a third friend, Balder. He seems to be a yard gnome and so has suffered the humiliation of being stolen by college students and carried on travels (as well as being peed on a lot). But Balder is really a Viking god, son of Oden, and in search of his ship, Ringhorn. (If you know anything about Don Quixote, you’ll like this wackiness to the nth degree.)

Take this trip with the three as they fight the Dark Wizard and the fire giants. joining forcing with jazz legends and mad scientists. Answer the big questions in life: Why do we die? And how do we really live? All the while wondering whether the dying Cameron is hallucinating from his hospital bed or if he is finding the meaning of life. Or both.

Note: This is a book for mature readers. There’s significant profanity. (Sample chapter title: “Chapter Four in Which a Brief Sanctuary is Found, I Fail to Comprehend Jazz, and I Am Forced to Have a Conversation with My Asshole Father.”)

Teachers: If you are a Kurt Vonnegut fan, and want to introduce students to this genre (if you can even call it a genre), this is the book to recommend.

I enjoyed reading all three books in this series. What made me think of them today was something that may seem unconnected: I read an article stating that a new version of the classic The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is going to be published soon.

I don’t think of “The Girl” series as on the same level as Huck Finn, but I did think about why I haven’t recommended the three books to you even though I liked them all. They’re not YA books and they don’t fit with any of our library projects. They’re adult books and they contain some graphic violence, particularly against women. So I worry a bit about your maturity level, about whether your parents would mind if you read these uber-popular bestsellers.

The reason Huck Finn is no longer read much in schools is that some people find it offensive because the characters use the ‘n’ word. The new version is taking that word out in the hope that with this censoring, it will be allowed back in the schools. So I thought about whether a YA version of “The Girl” books would be popular with teens. But here’s what I came up with:

The book is available in the library in the regular adult fiction section.

The violence against the women is not glorified–it makes you hate the perpetrators and root for Lisbeth. I remember when I finished the first book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I thought that the book title should have been “Men Hurting Women.” Sure enough, I later read a review that said the title in the original Swedish was “Men Who Hate Women”(or something very close). And in a later book, the narrator even tells us that this is a story about men hating women, even more than it’s a spy story. I think the circumstances of the novel are sort of a cautionary tale–a safe opportunity for teen girls to see just how bad some men can behave toward them.

I let my own teens read it. I didn’t worry about them. They were not emotionally scarred or damaged.

There are  teens who don’t like some of the books teachers recommend, but they get hooked on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and then read through all three novels. Library folks call these types of novels ‘homerun books’ because they are the ones that get you into the reading game. You read them and then you move on to other books. And that is exactly what we want to happen.

So, if you’re mature and not easily scared, you could give these a try. In the first, an old uncle hires a journalist to help him find out what happened to his niece. The journalist seeks help from Lisbeth Salander, a brilliant computer hacker. And through the series, this becomes Lisbeth’s story, the damage done to her, her will to fight back and survive in bizarre circumstances that involve spies, intrigue, government cover ups and some incredibly loyal friends.

Yes, this is an odd book to include in a blog of book reviews for high school students. But when the CHS seniors were looking for works of (loosely historical) fiction to read before being required to develop a research question based on something in the novel, two students asked me if I had any suggestions for books about architects. And, unfortunately, I didn’t.

Considering that I could be asked this question again, I decided to read The Women by T. C. Boyle.  The women of the title are the wives and mistresses of Frank Lloyd Wright, a genius who crafts plenty of drama as well as original designs. Boyle gives the reader an egomaniacal Wright, one whose vision was preeminent. He considered other people to exist in order to service it. Thus he secured loans that he had no intention of repaying. He rarely paid his staff’s salary, and yet he always had a cook and handymen about.

The story’s narrator, Sato, is a Japanese youth and one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s interns—budding young architects who paid Wright for the privilege of working for him, but who were required to do household jobs and run errands. Sato arrives at Taliesin (Wright’s home in Wisconsin) after Wright is married to his third wife. The narrative alternates between Sato’s own experience as an unpaid intern and his knowledge—and imaginings, as he couldn’t know what passed between characters years before he arrived on the scene—of Wright’s history with his wives and mistresses. The narrative moves backward in time from the third wife to the first. This is a great choice because it leaves for a climax the great tragedy of Wright’s life—the ax murder of his mistress, her children and four others, and the burning of Taliesin.

Wright designed Taliesin for Mamah Cheney. For her, he left his first wife, Kitty, and their six children. Mamah was the wife of a neighbor and an advocate of free love who also left her children to live with Wright. It is about her experience and tragedy that the final section of the novel revolves.

Starting at the end of the series of Wright women, the reader meets Olga, another Wright mistress who will later become his third wife. Her presence is the goad for Wright’s second wife, Miriam, to come to life. She is described in the publisher’s blurb as a passionate southern belle, but she is also portrayed as an opium-addicted mad woman with an ego to match Wright’s, bent on revenge against the new mistress. Her behavior is ironic (to say nothing of hypocritical) as before marrying Wright, Miriam had been his mistress while he was still married to Kitty. She will engages the newspapers in her fight to tell her side of the sordid story. And Wright was quite the celebrity, so the public gobbles up his personal drama in the same way it now seeks news about movie stars.

Though the true beauty of this novel is Boyle’s astonishing ability to create the intimate emotions and conversations of his characters with perfect-pitch dialogue and brilliant imagery, there is talk throughout of Wright’s architecture—his projects are named and his ‘natural style’ is discussed.

So, if you are looking for a novel with a discussion of architecture to start your senior project, you will be absolutely engrossed in the outrageous lives and terrible tragedies detailed in The Women. And even if there is never another student who asks me for a book about an architect, I’m so thankful that those two students did—because without their requests, I would never have picked up this wonderful novel.

This is California Writers’ Month–and to celebrate, we read books by California authors.  I’m very excited because, as part of the celebration, on Thursday night, I’ll be reading aloud a few pages from the new book Tattoos on the Heart by Father Gregory Boyle at the Borders Bookstore in Montclair. (My review of that book is coming soon!)

I also found out that Borders wants to print an essay I wrote two years ago for California Writers’ Month on the novel Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner. I guess I’ll find out tomorrow night if they are going to make a poster copy or just have copies available to encourage customers to buy the book. At any rate, this reminded me of what a great novel Angle of Repose is. Though I’d love it if students read the novel, this review is for adults, the primary audience for the book.

. . .

My local library had added an adult reading program to its menu of summer kids’ programs. Always supportive, I had shown up ready to list the many books I was reading. Just before I started to fill in the participation form with Sedaris’ “When You are Engulfed in Flames,” the librarian mentioned that the staff had chosen to give the adult program a theme. The children’s program was about ‘bugs’ and the teen program was about ‘metamorphosis.’ Adult program participants would read books connected to California in some way.

Still wanting to be supportive, I figured I’d jot down the titles of the John Steinbeck novels I’d read. “When you finish the first book, you get a free DVD rental,” the library lady quipped, handing me the coupon. Now I was in a quandary. I hadn’t read the Steinbeck books over the summer—not even in the last several years in fact—and I wasn’t one to accept a reward for something I hadn’t done.

“Let me see what I can come up with,” I told her, but dreaded adding a book to my already long summer reading list just to follow the program rules. There were so many good books at home already!

A few days later, in one of the loveliest moments of serendipity in my life, a friend handed me a birthday gift. Not just any friend, but one whose core sympathies so deeply parallel my own that I not only trust her judgment and taste; I skip her advice at my own peril. “Read this book,” she said. “You have to read this book.”

And I did read Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner. Despite the fact that Stegner won the Pulitzer Prize for the novel, I had never heard of it. It was an old book by now—published in 1971—but reissued as a Penguin Classic. Stegner published many fine books and won the National Book Award as well as three O. Henry prizes for short fiction and the Robert Kirsch Award from the Los Angeles Times for lifetime literary achievement. Nonetheless, Angle of Repose is considered his finest work.

It seems to me that the book’s jacket blurb does little to interest the reader in buying the title. A man looks into his grandmother’s past in California. So what? It is the very personal past of the grandmother—her desperate efforts to follow her husband through his California scheming and his moves through unpopulated areas as he works to develop irrigation systems and other infrastructure that the state isn’t quite ready for—that hooks the reader. Through letters to her friends ‘back East,’ the grandmother, Susan Burling, makes apologies for her husband, laments being removed from culture and society, longs for good books and her family.

Susan’s story is framed by the narrator’s own life. Lyman Ward is an old man himself with a degenerative bone disease that has left him crippled and wheelchair bound. His wife of many years left him while he was hospitalized and his adult children think he is going senile because he wishes to be alone in the Grass Valley home of his grandparents to sort through his grandmother’s letters and to write his grandparents’ history.

The narrator’s grandmother is based on Mary Hallock Foote, a nineteenth-century writer and illustrator. Stegner received permission from Foote’s descendants to publish some of her letters in his book (although the family later accused him of plagiarism). The passion of these unaltered letters give the book an insight into the crucible of a married woman’s life that would otherwise have been missing. It is moving to see how deeply this nineteenth-century marriage with all its problems parallels twenty-first century relationships and the issues that plague them. That Susan’s creative life and spirit continually support the family with income from her work—while her husband’s work fails–is ironic considering that the life she and her husband are living is hardly the kind that one would expect to nurture her creativity. And yet Susan is able to capture local color throughout California and in Mexico—sending her work to her publishing friends in the east, who know there is a market for the exotic tales and illustrations.

One of the men who is an employee and trusted friend of Susan’s husband has the misfortune to fall in love with her. Considering the turmoil of her marriage to a taciturn engineer, it would seem natural that Susan return his affection. And yet these are decent people with high moral principles. Veering from them—or even thinking of veering from them—can only lead to tragedy. And it does. As the narrator Lyman Ward explores this, he considers the role of forgiveness in his own marriage.

The editors of the Modern Library have chosen Angle of Repose as one of the ‘one hundred best books of the twentieth century.’ Trust them. Trust me—a fellow bibliophile. Read this book. You have to read this book.